Saturday and Colin is back to help Cat get the study ready to paint (I am out of action with a sore back). We are super excited about getting another room done and cannot wait to see the colour!
Colin comes with doughnuts, they don’t last long. These doughnuts have fuelled the build over the last few months…
Cat is removing the last of the blue and orange tape buried at the edges of the plaster with a sharp knife. Cat is still quite sweary today.
She is also cleaning up the last of the timbers and stones and that I didn’t manage to finish.
Colin, with his new found skill of lime plastering, is repairing and tidying up areas where the plaster has been damaged.
Colin’s ingenious bolster made of cardboard and plastic works a treat for repairing the plaster around the tops of the sockets.
The small trenches in the concrete floor where the new radiators will sit have been cleaned out (they were full to the brim with rubble still) ready for the plumber.
The lime plaster, repaired and ready to paint!
After all the scrubbing has finished, the whole room – walls, ceilings and floors – needs hoovering. Cat is demonstrating why all our backs are sore.
Colin knocks off the edge of the plaster in the sitting room, the part that looks a bit ‘Flintstones’ that we hate. We want it to continue around the corner to the edge of the front door now. As our plasterers are not available for a few weeks, Colin is going to attempt to plaster this. He has watched some YouTube videos…
You can clearly see the three layers of lime plaster here. The first coat is called the ‘scratch coat’ and uses haired lime, the second ‘float coat’ uses un-haired lime and is textured with grit, finally the ‘top coat’ is smooth and thin, mixed with a very fine silver sand.
The plaster in the sitting room (that I knocked a chunk off last week removing some buried orange tape) has been repaired and can be painted over tomorrow. It’s as easy as that to repair, a good thing as the plaster is quite delicate. A small knock and it leaves a mark.
It’s definitely green here.
A gloriously sunny Saturday, reminding us that we are nearly through the long, dark, wet, cold, muddy and sweary winter, thankfully.
Our front garden looks like an abandoned building site (it is essentially) so Colin is having a tidy up.
Hopefully this will make our neighbours happy, it makes us very happy.
All the good timber has been stacked up in the back garden, raised off the lawn so it won’t kill it.
We have gained a years supply of kindling, thanks to Colin, tomorrow we will have somewhere to put it.
Incredibly Cat has just dug these up from the abandoned vegetable patch in the front garden!
Home grown beetroot and knobbly carrots, with the emphasis on knobbly!
Hello just been looking at your various blogs………can see it is a LONG hard slog.
Hope you are both safe and well
Give our regards to John
Love and best wishes, Doreen & David
Thank you both! Yep, we have a long way to go yet but we are close! Planning to be in at the end of March, we shall see… Also, apologies for the swearing! xx